


Trial and Retribution Fix

by purefoysgirl



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Extended Universe - Fandom, Trial & Retribution
Genre: Emotional Manipulation, Fix-it fic, Gaslighting, Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture, Manipulation, Roberto Bellini is a manipulative shit, Will Graham makes a friend, subverting justice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-31
Updated: 2016-12-31
Packaged: 2018-09-13 13:07:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9125080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purefoysgirl/pseuds/purefoysgirl
Summary: Did you watch the Trial and Retribution episodes with Hugh Dancy as Roberto Bellini?  Did you, too, have just a leeeeedle bit of trouble understanding how someone (Roberto) who was fixing to go to college was stupid enough to take the fall for such an obvious twatwaffle (Damon)?ME TOO. I mean, seriously, if that douche parade said to me, “Yeah, so, when the police come, you just confess and... yeah, I’ll say I didn’t do it. Just go to prison FOREVER for me,” well, I would up my murder spree by one more.SO, I have devised an out, because after four hours of growing disbelief and being utterly creeped out by that nasty dude, I could not manage to suspend my disbelief long enough to buy that smart kids would just abandon their future for such a trashpile.Please see below for a version I can personally live with... and please come talk to me if you want, I am bemused, disturbed, and generally not okay with Trial and Retribution.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HotSauce418](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HotSauce418/gifts).



> My eternal gratitude to Hotsauce for bringing Roberto Bellini to my attention and reading this for me! You encourage me more than you can know!

* * *

Roberto Bellini was not quite the fool _Damon_ thought he was.

Sure, it was fun working for him, it was even more fun watching him play with Antonio and Jimmy like puppets. Yeah, it was a blast helping him out with those women, holding them down while he did whatever weird shit he wanted. Whatever, it wasn’t like they meant anything to Roberto. They were just cows, cows who screamed and cried and died and were replaced by new ones, no big deal. It was enjoyable enough to witness the control Damon forced over them, exciting even to witness it, and yeah he got his rocks off a couple of times, more keyed up by the dominance than anything.

But there in the yard at the electronics dump, while Damon sprayed them clean with the power hose and watched them scramble about and laugh like innocent puppies, Roberto’s indulgence died a quick and serious death.

“So, the deal is, if something happens, if we get caught or tracked down,” Damon said, his eyes lingering on each in turn. “You’re going to confess, right?”

“Yeah, of course,” Jimmy said, trembling and soaked and eager to please, and Antonio, box of rocks that he was, nodded without even thinking it over.

“What about you?” Roberto asked, his grin fading. He pushed his curls back to get a better look at the man who stared at him. Yeah, ill-disguised, that look. The main reason Damon had taken on Antonio, thinking he was being so slick. A man didn’t do that sort of shit to women if he didn’t have some issues, and Roberto was not about to find out for himself what Damon was capable of doing to him.

“Tell them I wasn’t involved, of course, should they even ask,” Damon said, gracing him with an expansive smile as if he’d just offered them the best gift in the world.

Three women murdered. Life in prison on three sentences, at least, paying for one of them he wasn’t even present for.

“You want us to say we did it and cover for you?” Roberto clarified.

“Shut _up_ , ‘berto!” Antonio warned, and looked to Damon for approval, which he found in spades.

“Yeah, no big deal, right?” Damon asked, putting on that cool-guy act Roberto secretly found so absurd. “If all of you confess and say you did it alone, they can’t pin it on anyone. It’ll be fine.”

“Yeah,” Roberto echoed. “Just fine.”

He watched Damon turn the hose on his brother again and thought about life in prison when his scholarship to University was waiting for him.

What was one more murder if he was going down for three? Might as well try to get while the getting was good.

He plastered on a smile and stepped into the spray, the wheels of his mind already turning.

* * *

Seduction wasn’t something Roberto had ever had to try at. It seemed like people—whatever their gender preference—got hung up somewhere between his forehead and chin and never got back out again. It suited him well enough, though it was annoying sometimes.

It seemed to be working on Damon, though.

“Where’s Antonio?” Damon asked, trying for silky smooth and winding up more in the range of creepy pedo-Uncle as he gave Roberto A Look.

“Home,” Roberto answered, slipping under his arm to get inside the office. It was a mess, as always, but that had never bothered him. “I thought I’d come see you.”

“Oh?” The anticipation Roberto heard in his voice made his skin prickle but he gamely turned, armed with a smile, and said, “Yeah. Y’know, just... us. I thought we could hang out.”

He slipped a bottle from inside of his jacket, some of his pop’s best wine.

“ _Where_ did _you_ get _that_?” Damon asked, the emphasis accompanied by a predatory smile.

“Nicked it from the cabinet,” Roberto said with a shrug. “Thought we could celebrate. We had a good time tonight, didn’t we?”

“Yeah, yeah, we did,” Damon agreed, unsuspecting. He thought he was so clever, encouraging them to participate as they had, cajoling them into masturbating to his live torture porn.

Oh, but not Damon. No, he watched them all too avidly, actually wanted Roberto to touch his dumbass brother, too, really hooking them in where they couldn’t escape.

But there would be no worries after tonight, no questions.

Roberto Bellini was nobody’s fool. At least, not for very long.

“Got some glasses, or we drinking it straight from the bottle?”

Damon laughed at that and turned to snag two cups from the shelf. He dumped the contents out and handed them over, watching Roberto fill them to the brim.

“You know, I always have admired your potential, Roberto,” he purred, installing himself a touch too close. The scent of his cheap cologne with its undertone of mint gum and sweat was not working for Roberto, but he hid his wrinkling nose in his cup, taking a deep drink.

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Damon said, sipping from his cup as if he had half the manners he pretended to. Roberto was surprised, now that the blinders had dropped, by how much he really disliked this man. He’d been a little more suckered than he’d first thought, and that only steeled his resolve.

“What d’you mean?” he asked, lifting his head with a slight toss from habit, spilling his hair back over his cheek. “Doing the stuff you do?”

“Just... _potential_ ,” Damon said, and reached out to tuck a stray lock of hair back behind Roberto’s ear, his fingertips lingering just a little longer than they should have.

‘ _I am not fucking this man_.’ The thought was immediate and solid and immovable as stone. There was no fucking way he was going to do anything with Damon except what he’d come to do in the first place—kill him, set up the body, leave the note, and get the fuck home before his pop realized he was gone.

Easy.

“Hey, can I bum a smoke?” Roberto asked, leaning in slightly, his eyes wide.

Damon smiled and slid off of the couch.

The moment his back was turned, Roberto spiked his drink. He needed him out and he needed him out _fast_.

“Antonio wouldn’t like me giving you this,” Damon said, snagging the half-done pack from his desk.

“I’m sure there’s all kinds of things you could give me that my brother wouldn’t like,” Roberto said, plucking the cigarette from the pack and lighting it with quick, deft movements. He took a deep drag, wondering why his nerves weren’t screaming.

But then, they hadn’t screamed when those women had. Fuck, his heart hadn’t even kicked up, no adrenaline, no anything. He may as well have been watching a horror show for all he’d felt.

“Is that why you’re here?”

“Yeah,” he said, tipping his head up to meet Damon’s gaze as the man sat down again, deliberately splaying into Roberto’s space as if daring him to back away. “She was a good one, wasn’t she? That teacher? She lasted a lot longer than the first one.”

It was a guaranteed sure thing, getting him talking about the girls and what he liked to do to them. They drank and laughed and talked and Roberto even let him cop a feel, pretending to be tipsy, waiting for the spike to kick in.

It did. Damon’s eyes got progressively heavier. He eventually slumped back against the couch with a soft grunt, lax and boneless.

Roberto poured his cup out and wiped it with his shirt, over and over, his eyes flicking around the room. The ladder was still against the far wall from when Antonio had changed the overheads. The rope was just down in the yard, strong and heavy but still sturdy even after weathering.

“You sure think well of yourself, you old prick,” Roberto whispered, fumbling his gloves out of his waistband and pulling them on. “You really think I was going to give up my future so you could fuck your girlfriend every weekend like every other sad middle-aged bloke?”

He sneered at the unconscious man and quickly killed the lights on his way out. No one was around, nor likely to see him, but he didn’t want to take any chances. He made quick work of going down for the rope and just as quickly got himself back upstairs. It wouldn’t be long before it wore off and Damon was alert again.

Roberto fully intended he be awake when it happened.

He rather relished the idea of seeing Damon’s expression when he realized what was happening.

Grinning, Roberto scrambled around the office, up onto Damon’s desk to reach the ceiling and the pretentious box he plugged those girls’ tits into. He put it carefully on the desk and secured the rope to the beam above the drop ceiling, hanging on it to make sure it would hold.

The noose was easy. The hard part was getting Damon’s heavy, boneless body walked up the ladder to reach it.

“Fucking hell, you’re heavy,” Roberto said, panting with exertion as he tugged and pulled and lifted Damon up onto his desk. It was taking too long, he feared. He was going to wake up too early. Urgency tinged his movements but did nothing to detract from his intent. He braced on the folding ladder’s opposite side and hefted Damon up and back against it, using it to keep him tilted and upright. He was sweating and angry and annoyed, but he was not about to stop now.

He slipped the noose around Damon’s neck and tightened it, and draped his arm through two of the rungs to keep him from strangling just yet.

And then he waited.

He crushed the cup into tiny little bits and scattered it out of the window and he waited.

He arranged the box on the desktop out of reach of Damon’s boots and he waited.

He read and reread the confession note, simple and straightforward and easy to forge since he’d been signing Damon’s name to shit for months, and he waited.

“W... what the fuck is this?”

Until he didn’t have to wait anymore.

“You really thought I was going to cover for you, didn’t you?” Roberto asked, standing on the opposite side of the desk to have an unobstructed view. Damon reached for the noose, feeling for the knot, and the ladder wobbled dangerously. “You honestly thought I’d go to prison for _you_? You’re _old_.”

He walked around the side of the desk, eyes fastened on Damon’s face, enjoying the look of cocky confidence being slowly replaced by wary understanding.

“You’re old,” he said again. “You’re all tied down to that cunt wife of yours and those stupid brats. You honestly thought I’d spend the rest of my life in prison while you fucked your way through middle age? _That_ is fucking crazy. _That_ is even crazier than the fucked up shit you do to those women, Damon.”

He pulled on the ladder. It was easy to tug it, easy to let him slide off of it and catch himself on the lip of the desk.

“I’ve got a scholarship, university in the States,” Roberto said, his tone conversational as he put the ladder back where it had come from. Damon gained his feet and started tugging on the noose, trying to loosen it quickly before he could come back. “I’ve got my whole life ahead of me.”

He grabbed Damon’s belt and jerked him backwards, off of the desk, away to dangle over open air. He spun him around, smirking at his attempts to kick free.

“You’ve already wasted your life. I’m not going to let you waste mine,” Roberto said, and just stood there, watching while Damon’s face turned purple, while the little veins in his eyes burst into brilliant red over the whites, while his spittle-flecked tongue poked from his mouth and his arms stopped flailing about.

He watched him for a long time, until the body stopped swaying and a puddle of urine started to form beneath his dangling boots. The stench of his emptying bowels was sickening, but Roberto waited all the same.

And once he was satisfied that Damon was well and truly dead, he put the note next to the box and walked all the way back home through the alleys, smiling and content.

* * *

Antonio caught him coming in and drove him upstairs like a sheepdog herding an errant lamb. He waited until they were in the privacy of their room before he hissed, “Where’ve you _been_?!”

“With Damon,” Roberto said, dropping onto his bed with a wince at how the springs shrieked. He unlaced his shoes and pulled them off, enjoying the growing indignation on his brother’s face.

“What d’you mean _with Damon_?” Antonio asked, standing in front of him with his hands on his hips, pretending authority where there was none.

“Y’know,” Roberto said, shrugging. “ _With_ him.”

He watched it sink in, watched his brother’s eyes flash and moil and the faintest stirrings of jealousy start. Perks of being the pretty one, Roberto always got to them first if he wanted to, and it was fun to watch Antonio seethe when he lost on that count.

“You mean you fucked him?”

“Well... _yeah_ ,” Roberto said, stripping his socks off and pulling his flannel shirt off. “ _Well_ , he fucked me, so kind of not, but yeah.”

“‘berto,” Antonio said, sitting down on his own squeaky bed with a blank, dumb look on his face.

“Look, he’s been after me, okay? You’re not stupid, ‘tonio,” Roberto reminded him. “You know what he was after. I figured you’d want me to, right? I mean... we’d do anything for him, so...”

It took a moment, but it kicked in, whatever weird hold Damon had over his brother. Antonio nodded then and said, “Sure, I mean... if that’s what he wants. Did he... do anything?”

“I ain’t got tits do I?” Roberto flared, knowing how to back his brother down. “ _No_ , he didn’t do anything _weird_ , okay? We drank some wine and he fucked me, no big deal.”

Antonio absorbed that silently, cocking his head when Roberto allowed a troubled look to color his expression.

“‘berto?”

“He was acting strange,” Roberto said, pausing in the act of undressing as if recalling something that bothered him. “He kept... I dunno, he kept talking about those girls, ‘tonio. He said something really strange about it. I think... I think he wished he hadn’t done any of it.”

“What?” Antonio asked, a thread of panic in the single word.

“Fuck, I don’t _know_ , okay?” Roberto hissed, and dragged his shirt off to fling it towards the hamper. “He was crying and acting really weird! He told me to come home and keep quiet, whatever happened.”

“Keep quiet? What, like about the girls?” Antonio asked, clutching for some sort of instruction. “Are we supposed to, as well? Did he tell you anything to tell me, ‘berto?”

“No, fuck!” Roberto said, irritated. He shoved to his feet and worked his jeans off to pad towards the bathroom in just his boxers. “He wasn’t thinking about _you_ , Antonio, okay? He was drunk and acting stupid and that’s that. Go to sleep, will you?”

It was all over the afternoon papers, lurid headlines with pictures of Damon’s smug face juxtaposed with those of his victims. _His_ victims.

That part made Roberto smile.

“I can’t believe it!” Antonio blubbered, red-faced and panicked. “We was supposed to say we did it all! What the _fuck_?!”

“Guess he loved us more than we thought,” Roberto said, smirking at his theatrics.

Antonio rounded on him, outraged and betrayed. “ _You_.”

Roberto’s brows rose over his blue eyes at that, delighted by his brother’s distress.

“ _You did this_!”

“No.”

“You _did_! You did something to him, didn’t you?” Antonio asked, growing increasingly more incensed the longer he talked. “You messed him up somehow! Got him to confess and kill himself!”

Roberto stared steadily at him, stared at him so long that Antonio subsided a bit, uncertain.

“Yeah,” he quietly said, stepping into his brother’s space to breathe it up into his face. “I messed him up _real_ good. And unless you want me to do the same to you, you’ll keep your fucking mouth shut about it.”

Antonio’s eyes bulged with shock and his mouth dropped open, but he didn’t so much as squeak a protest.

“I’m leaving for university in a few weeks, Antonio,” he said, stepping back to give his brother some breathing room. “I’ve got the whole world waiting for me.” He angled a look at his brother, his trembling and weak brother. “Why the fuck would I give all that up for Damon? Hm? What was he going to give up for us?”

Antonio shuddered, tears and snot running down his face.

“I’ll tell you, _nothing_ ,” Roberto said. “Jack-fucking- _shit_ , that’s what. He was gonna leave the three of us to rot in prison for him, right?”

Antonio nodded slightly, a light crack appearing in his vision of Damon.

“Well, now we’re not going to,” Roberto purred, giving his brother a cajoling smile. “He confessed, ‘tonio. He was overwhelmed by guilt and killed himself. Neat and tidy.”

It look a long, long time for Antonio to stammer out, “But what if they push, ‘berto? What if the cops keep looking? They’re bound to find out—”

“Then stick to the plan,” Roberto told him. “Tell them you did it. All. By. Yourself.”

His brother stared at him, stricken. His voice was choked and small when he asked, “You want me to take the blame for you, ‘berto?”

Roberto nodded and reached up to wipe his brother’s face with his sleeve. “Yeah. I mean, you were gonna do it for Damon, weren’t you? What, you’d do it for him and not for your own flesh and blood, ‘tonio?”

Snuffling and shuddering, Antonio flung his arms around Roberto and squeezed him tight, sobbing, “Of course I will, little brother! Of course I will!”

Roberto rubbed his back with both hands and smiled, pleased.

* * *

It satisfied everyone, it seemed. The terrifying killer, drunk and remorseful, pouring over the trophies of his murders and then deciding to kill himself instead of one more woman.

Roberto kept Antonio from cracking when the police came to question them. He answered their questions with a faint air of disbelief and assured them over and over that they had to be wrong, that Damon was the best man he knew, that it couldn’t possibly be the case. He even managed tears when they said the evidence was overwhelming.

The tears were half amusement, if he was honest with himself.

Jimmy was their weak link, he knew. Jimmy required direction and was absolutely devastated by Damon’s death, insisting that the man had nothing to do with any of it. The police put it down to hysterical rambling, but Roberto knew it would only be a matter of time before he talked.

Jimmy was a liability, and liabilities were dangerous.

It was so unfortunate, then, that Jimmy killed himself in a sad homage to Damon’s own suicide, right there in the office where Damon had died.

Such a sad, sad fate for such a sad, sad boy, but it put the appropriate amount of wariness into Antonio and Roberto could move ahead and pass it off as a just a phase of embarrassing hero-worship he’d gone through.

It was a phase of his life Roberto happily left behind him, left behind him with such ease that it should’ve scared him.

But there was very little that scared Roberto Bellini.

Not even moving to the States to attend university rattled him, nor did the new surroundings. He smiled and charmed and laughed his way through pre-med as if he’d never held anyone down to let a megalomaniac torture them. He never had nightmares about them, never flinched when he remembered their screams. What he’d done just _was_ , no more important or concerning for him than washing his laundry or going on a date. The world was innocently ignorant.

He moved on to George Washington University to continue his degree in surgical critical care and fulfill his residency.

And he met someone.

And the wheels started turning.

Because Roberto Bellini was nobody’s fool.

He made it a point to find out everything about him, this doppelganger of his in the Forensic Science Department.

A quiet and antisocial version of himself by the name of Will Graham.

* * *

Will, beneath the layers of sass and impatience he’d acquired during his time as a homicide detective in Louisiana, was fairly easy to befriend. All it took was the shock of their twin features and persistence on Roberto’s part, and before long they were spending every spare minute together.

Before long, bringing coffees to one another during long study sessions, doubling up in Roberto’s apartment to save Will some much-needed cash, covering for each other when they could manage when exhaustion wore out became much more than just a failsafe on Roberto’s part.

Will Graham was his friend. Possibly, his first real friend, an equal, someone who understood him well enough that when the dreaded call came from Antonio, he knew he could count on Will.

After all, he was all Will had outside of an elderly aunt somewhere in Michigan. And he knew all too well how fiercely Will clung to what little he had.

So on his twenty-sixth birthday, sitting in the floor of their shared flat with pizza and beer and a long day behind them, Roberto told Will everything.

Damon.

The girls.

What he’d done to them. What he’d done to Damon and, later, to Jimmy.

All of his secrets shared with Will, who had moved from surprise to disbelief, to thoughtful contemplation.

“So... when we first met, when you saw me...” Will carefully said, measuring his words like currency. “Did you plan from the start for this moment, Roberto?”

Roberto blinked, meeting his gaze unflinchingly until Will’s own identical gaze dropped. “I knew it could come in useful. At first it was just that, yes. But not anymore. You’re my friend, Will. I know I can tell you anything, just as you can tell me anything. We’re friends, and that means more to me than you can ever know.”

“Is that why you’re telling me this?” Will asked, washing back his pizza with a swallow of beer. “Because your brother is being questioned and I know forensics?”

“Yes,” Roberto said, just watching him. “Jimmy’s mother applied to have the case reopened. The science is better, now. They know Damon didn’t act alone.”

“They want to question you,” Will stated, ordering the facts, somehow able to partition the horror of Roberto’s actions away from the twin before him. “They’ll want samples.”

“Yes,” Roberto said. “Antonio said they lifted DNA from one of them, matched it to his.”

Will frowned softly and cocked his head. His voice was soft when he asked, “Do you regret it? What you did to them?”

“No,” Roberto said, unwilling to lie now to his best friend. “I don’t. It was just something I did. It didn’t mean anything to me then and it doesn’t mean anything to me now.”

Will nodded, the movement jerky but certain.

“You know what you are, then?” He asked it with a lopsided, strained smile.

It was Roberto’s turn to nod. “A psychopath? But not a particularly motivated one, Will. I didn’t care about what he did to them, but I have no desire to do it myself. Dead people are no fun, are they?”

“No,” Will said, staring at him as if he might be able to find a spark of humanity in Roberto’s soul through his gaze. “Promise me.”

“What?”

“Promise me you won’t torture or kill anyone again,” Will said, turning his beer bottle in his hands.

“I won’t,” Roberto said, meaning it. “I promise. It was interesting at the time, but my interests have changed.”

“Okay then,” Will said, taking another swig of his beer. “But you’ll owe me, Roberto. One of these days, when I need your help, you’ll give it.”

“I’d give it anyway,” Roberto told him, grinning because it was true. Friendship really _was_ something to murder over, he now knew.

“Well... then here’s what you do.”

* * *

Will was gone when Roberto returned, the investigation closed firmly behind him, exonerated on all charges.

The flat was cleared of his things. A note stated that Will had moved to a more affordable place. He left a bundle of cash to cover the bills he owed and his number.

Roberto didn’t pressure him, though the loss of Will’s friendship hurt him in ways that seeing his brother go to prison simply couldn’t. Will would meet with him now and then, exchange updated phone numbers but no addresses, not on Will’s part.

Roberto always gave his own.

“For the favor I owe you,” he always said.

It kept them connected like an umbilicus, even long after Will had gone on to teach and Roberto had found his place as a respected surgeon in New York.

The favor he wondered he could ever repay his straight-laced and beloved friend.

Time passed. He left messages for Will every few months, the same information, the same statement. When he purchased the home he intended to stay in for the foreseeable future, he added a caveat, “Push the buzzer around the back if you need me. It rings my cell. I’ll come as soon as I’m able.”

Roberto never expected the buzzer to ring him for Will Graham. It was foolish to imagine his friend would ever find trouble deep enough to pay back what he’d done for Roberto’s sake, and Roberto Bellini was nobody’s fool.

* * *

It was surprising, then, to see Will’s face in the papers, charged with a series of murders that made Roberto’s brows rise with admiration. Will, of course, insisted he was innocent.

And Roberto was inclined to believe him. He knew too well that his surly, increasingly uncommunicative friend was simply not capable of it. He would have seen it before. Would have noticed a spark of it when he’d spoken nearly ten years ago about those girls he’d helped torture and murder.

He made discreet inquiries, applied funds to Will’s lawyer to assist in his case, and waited.

And watched Will’s exoneration at the hands of the Chesapeake Ripper.

He called again, left a message on Will’s phone.

“I’m here when you need me.” Repeating the address to an empty line. “Press the buzzer downstairs.”

Later he read about him in the papers and on Tattle Crime, saw the severe, cold face of Hannibal Lecter looking back at him and smiled.

Will seemed to attract psychopaths, or else was attracted to them in turn.

Years later when Lecter escaped and vanished in Will’s company, Roberto wondered what sort of favor the old Lithuanian doctor would owe Will and how long it would take him to pay it back.

The night after the wreck of police vehicles was discovered, so was the body of Francis Dolarhyde, brutally murdered at a cliffside home no one had realized was in the doctor’s name.

Roberto saw the body on the news and when his phone jingled, telling him the buzzer was ringing, he drove straight home from his private practice and went downstairs to open the door.

It was time to help out an old friend and make good. It would be suicide to ignore the summons now that Will had reached out.

And Roberto Bellini was nobody’s fool.


End file.
